Turn Myself Into Myself
Life is hard and I don't recognize any signs of it letting up. It’s like walking up an escalator the wrong way – I’m making progress albeit inefficiently.
I have a stockpile of videos, poems, songs that I try to consume whenever that hard gets a little bit too hard. Afterward, all the stresses and weights seem manageable and I'm absolutely convinced that nothing even felt wrong to begin with. Probably a sign that those stresses aren’t as weighty as I make them out to be. Regardless in that spirit, I just re-read Nikki Giovanni’s "Ego Tripping." I was introduced to and fell in love with the poem during Kim Reese’s theatrical interpretation in one of the later episodes of "A Different World." Reading it is always doubly satisfying, doubly liberating - but without fail I always revert.
In Jazz, Toni Morrison writes about women always asking for rest, but that rest is the last thing we need. Idle hands and minds would give the troubles of our personal worlds too much space to nestle in close to us. I still want rest, though. A day, God forbid a week, to shut off my phone, my computer, delete my whole damn email. And I'm only 21. The black women Morrison’s words craft are at least in their 50s and living in 1920s Harlem. How tragic for me that there's a whole lot of rest left to wish for.
But in between those requests for rest is a whole lot of life that comes in inconsistently packaged stages that aren’t all that terrible to bare. I haven't quite defined the stage I’m in now, but I think I’m over it. It's the rare class that actually teaches me anything worth knowing, and the rare outing that makes leaving the warmth of inside worthwhile. I remember feeling this way the last semester of high school. "It's time for this to be over," I bluntly told my mom. It's not that I want this monotonously wild college life to end, but something should probably give. Monotonously wild is still monotonous.
Even so, it’s not so much a dissatisfaction with the present as incredible anticipation for the future. Walking up that escalator the wrong way for the last three years has to be worth something, like a little agency to step off every once in a while, or at least some better calves. I think the Nadia coming up soon is nipping at the heels of the woman Giovanni writes about, though. Indeed, I’m about to turn myself into myself.
